Stories

INSTAGRAM MICRO CRIME FICTION

Keep it short, make it nasty...Follow This Desperate City on Instagram for a new story every Monday.

Volume 2(January - March 2016)

FringeBy J.J. Sinisi

In the outer edges of life, I have lost us. We break apart, a damaged ship melting into the current. I see him behind me, but know it’s not my Michael, the one I love.

Our blood mixes, a crimson apparition floating away into the reflection of our apartment, our home receding into a chasm of despair, of the city’s dirty water.

It hurts so much, he tells me.

And the people walk past, and then dogs scurry away.

I try to stand but his fist keeps me down.

The ghost dissolves into the puddle and Michael’s anger rages across a darkened façade and distorted peering faces.

I won’t stay down. I say it, I think, but can’t be certain he hears.

Two years ago she told me it’d end this way. Two years ago I was certain it wouldn’t.

I punch back, but he’s always been the stronger. Dad, himself one of four brothers, our grandparents failed attempt at creating the gentler sex, he’d say. The world works in pairs, the old man chided. Dominant and submissive. Strong and weak. Michael learned well.

She was mine, still is mine. His words form from his mouth but not in the dissolving image.

She pursued me, I think to say but don’t; a scorpion, a dangerous agent, that which should never divide a family.

But these are things for me to remember and him to forget, fading from the very tips of his memory, pushed out by her dark skin and the tender slope of her arched back.

And I cry. Not for the pain, though it hurts, and not for the sorrow, even as I’m enveloped. Instead it is the dissolution of our union, bonds tearing and my blood, dissolving before my eyes in the guts of our city.

END. (299)

Here and ThereBy J.J. Sinisi

​Split.

Splice.

Separate.

Divide.

Twain.

The distance between them, stretched and broken, he hadn’t considered it, even the street he stands upon, a line between his legs and off into oblivion. It’s what it took, after all, for him to realize anything was wrong in the first place.

“I’m not coming back.” Valentina says.

A livery speeds past, nearly catching his hand.

“Maybe I don’t want you to come back.”

“And maybe I want you to get hit by a fucking car.”

The word slices, more than acknowledging his hatred of swearing, something even less, disrespect meshed with flippancy.

She walks.

The cabs zoom, people blur on the other side.

“Don’t do that.”

She gives him the middle finger.

Anto grabs and spins her.

“I said don’t walk away from me.”

“And I said go fuck yourself.”

She wrestles free, her hair flapping at the closeness of the passing cars.

“Try it again,” she says, taunting him to do something even though he’s never done anything. That’s his biggest problem in life.

“I don’t want you to leave,” quieter now, rage broken by meanness.

“Touch me again.” She smiles with hate; joy in his torment, even here at the end.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

A minivan rolls up in the grinding traffic; a family of three, a boy cries while the mother laughs and the father stares at the double yellow line.

“I was never yours.” She pushes him. “There’s never been anything for you to lose.”

The van takes off and another torrent of midtown traffic.

She’s his, and he’s hers. That’s the split they agreed to from the beginning, everyone agrees too.

Never without the other, forever.

A bus this time, flat faced and angry, dividing the earth from the sky, it’ll work best.

Down The MiddleBy J.J. Sinisi

“I don’t need you to come. I want you to stay. But if you came, I guess that wouldn’t be so bad either.”

The elevator dings. Two women emerge, girls really, dresses retreating above their thighs, one white with sparkles, the other matte black, but opposite color shoes.

“Ladies,” Jacob says.

One laughs, the other sneers.

Jacob turns back. “Go, by yourself. They’ll appreciate it.”

“Or I’ll never return.”

Jacob shrugs. “It was your decision, live with the consequences.”

Donovan stares at Jacob’s face, the tight lines of his suit and the yarmulke on his head. A flowered broach on his left lapel defies realism, pinned without a counterpart.

Balance, his mother spoke of that too, a theme submerged into his childhood, soaking there, absorbing into his soul, and now he may never see her again.

He pushes the elevator button.

If Donovan covers half of his face, Jacob seems sad, his lip curling down, right eye dipping apologetically, but cover the other and he’s confident, lips a straight line, left eye wide and defiant.

“There’s a way out from this. I just don’t see it yet, but there’s always a way out.”

“If anyone can, it’s you, Don.”

Another ping, the elevator’s mirrors reflect all that artificial light before their split flays his body in two.

“I’ll see you when I get back.”

“I’ll pray for you,” Jacob says.

“I’m not religious.”

“That doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

Donavan feels calm. Maybe his mother was wrong. Maybe symmetry isn’t real and two things needn’t always have a match.He’d find out soon enough, what it really meant gambling with life and death.​END. (302 WORDS)

Moving NightBy J.J. Sinisi

She bites her lip, the tears swell. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t stay.” I find the courage to say. “The time is too thick, with anger, with my want.”

It doesn’t have to be like this, she wants to say. I see the words forming. But I know it in the way her bangs lift above her furrowed brow.

Tuesday night the moving truck will come. My things packed, large men with little future but heaps of strength will carry away the few valuable things I have left. Everything except her. I can’t fold her up and put her into a box. I can’t ever take her with me.

I step to the sidewalk and the street yawns. A little girl and her mother walk past. The mother grips the girl’s hand, scurrying away from the man with the missing tooth and ripped coat.

“I don’t want you to stay.” She points at me; a wavering finger perched atop unsteady resolution. “But I can’t let you leave. Not now, not like this.”

But like everything with her, it’s a lie. If it weren’t for my doggedness, my commitment to her satisfaction, she would never have seen me after that.

Monday night I’m back and this time I bring my knife. I bring my commitment. This time I wait for him.

Sometimes it’s more than just being spurned. I watch his car roll into place. The same way I did the night we had the fight. Sometimes it really has to do with love; the strength of that emotion and its crippling weakness.

Plunging the knife into his belly reminds me of our first night together, when she touched my face and told me to go deeper.

Don’t stop, she said then. There was nothing but emptiness and she wanted me to fill it. Fill it with my strength, fill it with my glory.

END. (312 WORDS)

Autumn's WindBy J.J. Sinisi

​“To here?” Consuelo asks.

“No.” Trey closes the distance between them. “To here.” His feet straddle the opening, the tips of his converse licking the air between here and ten stories down.

“No,” she pulls away. “You’re crazy.” But he’s not crazy, she knows, it was her thought to come up. Crazy is her jurisdiction. Her thoughts never lie.

A cold fall breeze snakes through the hole.

Trey sits down and the wind grabs his sweatshirt, flapping the hood. His legs dangle.

He smiles, and she giggles, their night, only now just ending with the rising of the sun. Hours ago, his fingertips against her breast, his nail beds so pale, such a contrast against the darkness of his skin. She can’t remember the last time normal had become special. She’s been so low for so long.

“Come here.” He puts his hand out.

Push him. So loud. Persistent. Push him and watch him fall. We all fall, why not now?

“No.” Her smile fades.

“Don’t be scared.”

Only my thoughts scare me. Why am I so dark? Why am I so evil?

“I’ll hold your hand,” he says.

She steps towards him. His butt inches closer to the edge and the sun casts him in hazy orange. She can see downtown LA, crashing into the horizon.

“I won’t let you fall.”

“What if I want to fall?”

“Not anymore.” He takes her and wraps his arms around her. “Not while I’m around.”

She couldn’t push him now if she tried. “But you can’t be here forever.”

“Neither can you,” he says.

But her thoughts betray her. They’ll be here forever, they tell her. For as long as she lives she’ll never escape them.

Her thoughts never lie. We all fall down.

END. (292 WORDS)

Short SightedBy J.J. Sinisi

The sprinkle of shells about the shore resembled Julian, confined in the prisonlike latticework of shadows.

“Are you going to tell him?” Henrietta had almost forgotten Julia was there until she spoke. But that’s what Julia did best, remained forgotten.

“How can I tell someone that?”

“I bet he’s the type of person who already knows, even though he doesn’t know he knows.”

Henrietta stopped beneath the dock and leaned amidst the briny wet columns. The surf was already approaching, the tides shifting. “It isn’t so much about the sex.”

“That’s not true.” Julia pulled her e-cigarette from her bag. “It’s always about the sex.”

“That’d be true but for Julian. He cares more about the money.”

Fishing boats dotted the blue; the farther out, the more they blended against the sunlight’s diamond shine across the water.

“You’re blind for 15% of your day, did you know that?”

Julia puffed the metal spigot. “I don’t sleep that much anymore.”

“No, I mean when you’re awake. Between blinking and moving your eyes around, 15% of the time you aren’t looking at a Godamned thing.”

Julia stared. “He isn’t just going to go away. You’re going to have to tell him something.”

Henrietta’s shadow interrupted the right angle of the pier’s shadow against the sand. She stepped back, letting the light have this one perfect thing.

“I’ll tell him tonight.”

“I can be there if you want.”

“No,” Henrietta said, pushing her feet into the sand, waiting for the rising tide to sweep the prints away. “No, I want to do it.”

“Suit yourself,” Julia said and walked on. She was so small and unremarkable her tiny feet barely depressed the sand.

​Henrietta admired that, a woman traversing the world without having it tremble at her feet. Oh what a life that must be.

END. (302 WORDS)

The SalesmanBy J.J. Sinisi

Walking out to the house wouldn’t be a problem, desolate as it was, framed in winter bludgeoned waves. He’d be exposed the entire time, his car not fitting onto the tiny slip of land extending out towards the front door.That’d be okay though. Exposure wasn’t always a bad thing. And Ronald would appreciate the audacity.

Six feet away, the water calmed, white caps fading into little depressed smudges of black on a taught blue drum.

He knocked.

“One sec.” Ronald’s voice came immediately.

Years ago, he would’ve thought about whether or not to have it out, or at his side, or still in the leather. Dramatically take it out or be ready to go? Now he knew, the job didn’t matter or where you worked, people only appreciated preparedness and efficiency. Both people, product buyers or sellers; it didn’t matter which.

“Dobkins.” Ronald’s face after he opened the door, pitted in dark spots, especially beneath the scar across his nose, tugging on his upper lip.

“Ronald.”

One thing Dobkins would never have debated, then or now, was keeping quiet. The house was remote, even the calm waves loud enough, and he knew Roland would oblige. In some ways, running from the boss was like playing hide and seek as a child. There was nothing left to do after you were discovered.

On the walk back, Dobkins paused, waiting for the high white caps to return. But the bay remained placid, and all he could feel was yesterday’s cold wind.

END. (250 WORDS)

EmpireBy J.J. Sinisi

Becket points to the silhouette. “What does that mean to you?” He asks Frieda.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t understand. Look at it. Look at the elegance, the integrity.”

“Buildings don’t have integrity.”

“No.” He leans against the elevator wall. “But history does. Empires can.”

Frieda adjusts the strap under her jacket. They arrive at the bottom floor and she hurries him into the waiting Range Rover.

She stops behind grinding traffic. The building’s shadow presses down atop the truck. They are in darkness again, always. He’s wrong. Integrity doesn’t exist in their history and Empires are always built on blood.

“You didn’t have to come back to work so soon. I told the agency that.”

“This is my job sir.”

“You’re a human being Frieda, and a fine one at that.” He goes to say more but balks, instead waving a hand, the way he dismisses business ideas or unwanted lovers right before she drives them home.

“Lunch, sir.”

Becket’s back to staring out the window, at fleeting slivers of history.

“I don’t think I’m hungry today.”

She pulls up and exits the truck. The strap moves again, the metal cradled within digs into her ribs.She opens his door and he buttons his coat and flattens his lapels.

“I don’t give many chances to talk about these types of things.” Becket says.

“I know that sir.”

A sharp nod and he walks away. She follows, watching and waiting.

END. (297 Words)

Unchecked GrowthBy J.J. Sinisi

“How do you do it?” Johanna asks, a thread of incredulity strumming beneath her question. “That growing expanse of humans, of brick and buildings. Hope is there? I can’t see it.”

She is both right and wrong, as we all are, about everything. We walk back into the apartment, moisture congealing under the ceiling paint, bulbous like a swollen sore.

“I hate it.” I sit on the couch and continue stacking bundled hundreds, adding to the rising structure on our coffee table. “This city, for creating all of this. Stifling me.” The four bags at my feet are nearly empty.

She sits down, picks up a rolled bill and blitzes through two more lines. Johanna’s always been a pro.

After wiping a tear she says, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Is it the powder or the emotion pushing out her tears? Then I remember; I don’t really care.

“You don’t have a choice,” I remind her. I point towards the sliding glass door and the concrete expanse. “Go ahead back down there, back where they found you.”

She twitches, watches the infectious rise of downtown and the water and her past life, the one we’re all running from but can’t ever outpace.

“There’s no hope. Back down there, or across the river. The way is forward.” I slap the last bundle on top, sending a shiver down the two foot high stacks. “The way is always forward.”

But she’s still looking back; at all we’ve left behind, all I’ve tried so fucking hard to suffocate with money and drugs. Goddamn her.

​END. (263 WORDS)

273By J.J. Sinisi

Victoria, she says in a tepid voice, it’s over.

I can’t hear her. The numbers: the two, the seven, and the three. Together they sum twelve, like the hours in the day, a clock, ticking away my disgrace.

Shelia and I have walked here from downtown, forty blocks of biting cold, just to stand in front of someone else’s graffiti etched across my memories.

A homeless woman shuffles up to us. Shelia waves a hand, tells her to move on. I reach into my pocket and hand her a twenty. She tries to talk to me, to say thank you. I ignore her. She is less a person than another reminder, of the places I have come from, the things I want to discard.

Later, Shelia and I will make love beneath the great skylight in my apartment, the one that casts a perfectly illuminated rectangle around the open gulf of my bedroom and stops before the connected marble bathroom. And I will moan, and tell her I love her, but the paint before me now will drip in my eyes then, and I will not see Shelia. I will see July and August and September. I will see the summer and the clock, covered in the black letters of a scrawling loose hand; I will see the journey I have forgotten.

And when she asks me what’s wrong I will lie and she will smile, because we all lie to each other. Two, seven, three, the night is now morning but we all pretend it’s still yesterday.